#or j&ne egb&rt either

[prince--of--mind]

freezing cold take:

the epilogues and homestuck 2 were not only a disgrace in storytelling, characterization and in general, but they also forever changed the landscape of the fandom for the worse. after they came out, the fanbase became way more split on the source material, and it was just so bad that it drove several people to dislike the comic by proxy

it was a complete waste of resources and not in the slightest what the fandom had actually wanted.

felt inclined to post this because i was browsing an old tumblr blog from circa 2016, close to when the comic ended, and people were talking about how hopeful they were about the epilogues. i remember that feeling, i was one of them. 

what people were hoping for was not for a sequel or an expansion- at least, not mostly. people were in general hoping for something that resolved several plot threads that were left dangling, something that answered many questions that had been left unanswered. 

we had the snapchat stories, for a while (remember those? I do. I’ll never forget them). and it generally succeeded at that, while introducing a story of its own. but then that stopped being made, and then the actual epilogues came out, and then they were... not great.

and now i’m not talking about more subjective things. it just entirely forgot about several aspects of the comic. sprites (which we knew existed still thanks to the credits) were completely forgotten, and so was jack and the felt. caliborn and the whole thing with the alpha kids visiting him? gone. never existed. 

instead we got a weird plot with heavy political allegories that fall apart if you think about them for more than a second, which twisted characters in terrible ways just to fit the narrative instead of the opposite, and attempts at representation that were hamfisted at best and actually offensive at worse.

(which as a trans guy, do not even get me started on what they did to Roxy and Jade. I will remain a firm believer of Trans Woman Roxy until I perish, sorry not sorry)

and it was just so... caustic, so aggressive to its detractors, almost reveling in it. its creators were jsut as bad, if not even worse. and the constant refuge in “its supposed to suck on purpose”. if it sucks on purpose and does not attempt to do anything other than suck, then its not some deep, insightful piece of art. it just sucks

its causticness caused the fandom itself to become that much more aggressive and spiteful as well, split into two halves which fought each other all the time. it’s a shame, the fandom had finally started to cool down and then this came along and ruined what litle progress it had made. and the worst part is that for some stupid reason, politics seem to have deeply entrenched themselves into the discussion. for some reason, whether you like the dubiously canon content or not seems to determine your morality for some people. and lets not even get started on june...

and for the record, i like hiveswap! i like friendsim! i think they could have made something decent with the franchise- but they didn’t. they wasted their resources on something that they KNEW a lot of people were going to hate, instead of working on the things most people cared about (like the epilogues people were actually asking for, or fucking Hiveswap). it just seems like the people on board were filled with hate, and spilled it onto their creation, and made it worse for it. rarely does writing from spite work, and here it definitely didn’t

anyway, that’s that. sorry if there’s any typos, it’s 4 am here and english is most definitely not my mother tongue. i call this a freezing cold take not because i think its wrong, but because this most certainly isnt something new or unique to myself. i know im not the only one thinking like this, but i dont really care. ive been thinking about this for years, and i guess i finally decided to put my thoughts down. this is incredibly messy, not proofread at all. im also not interested in arguing anything. i probably got a lot of things wrong and this is very much emotionally charged. i just keep seeing the state the fandom is in, and as someone whos been into homestuck since 2015, it makes me deeply sad. that’s it though lol, bye i guess